archive

ND Women’s Tennis: Irish take out No. 19 Bulls in home match

Molly Sammon | Monday, April 12, 2010

The third-ranked No. 1 Irish doubles team of sophomore Kristy Frilling and senior Kali Krisik won their 16th straight match in Notre Dame’s 7-0 defeat over South Florida Friday.“South Florida is a very good team,” Irish coach Julia Scaringe said. “They are a lot better than they were last year and I was thinking it was going to be a much closer match than it was.”The No. 6 Irish extend their overall record to 17-3 while the No. 19 Bulls received their sixth loss of the season. South Florida brought a very different team to South Bend than Notre Dame saw last season, as their top three players have moved up in the lineup past last year’s top singles player, Janette Bejlkova. The No. 2 Irish doubles team, senior Cosmina Ciobanu and Shannon Mathews, were the first to finish doubles play as they defeated their Bulls opponents, 8-6, just before Frilling and Krisik clinched the doubles point with an 8-6 victory. The No. 3 doubles team of junior Kristen Rafael and freshman Chrissie McGaffigan shut out their opponents to finish the doubles competition for the afternoon. “The girls look like they’re starting to gel with each other on doubles,” Scaringe said. “I really like the direction our doubles teams are going.”The first three singles competitions were easy victories for the Irish as two-set victories from Mathews, Krisik and McGaffigan grabbed the win. Ciobanu won the fourth singles contest as her opponent was forced to quit due to an injury. “We have been working on singles play a lot,” Scaringe said. “The girls went out there a took care of business.”Though both of the remaining singles matches headed into a third set, No. 18 Frilling at No. 1 singles and Rafael at No. 6 singles, each pulled through for an Irish sweep.With only two matches left before the Big East tournament and the NCAA Championships, the team has just a few more practices to perfect their game and prepare for the most important part of the season.“We’re going to get a lot of individual play in this week in practice,” Scaringe said. The Irish will return to the courts Friday to take on DePaul at Notre Dame’s Eck Tennis Pavilion.